About | Kirstie Behrens

Kirstie Behrens

I live and work in Pittenweem, Fife and have been working in printmaking since 2011, producing most of my work at the DCA in Dundee.

I have concentrated on the printmaking technique of etching.

I graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2019 in Fine Art and received the Angus Alive Graduate Exhibition Award see link.

My work often revolves around time-based projects where natural elements are used actively as tools in this process creating marks which are traces and evidence of the passage of time.

My Degree Show was called ‘The Land and the Sea.’

The Sea related to an etching of a rusty float on the shore. I took my etching and parcelled it up with bits of rust tied with string attaching it at low tide to a metal ring and then exposed it to the ebb and flow of the tide. The final piece carries traces of it’s time under the waves. I created the soundtrack for a film which layers images and sound together reflecting the rhythm of the waves. The film was projected onto one of the surviving sea washed etchings.

The Land related to St.Michael’s Wood which lies between Dundee and St.Andrews. Many of the trees have been cut down. I left an etching of a tree stump exposed over the seasons to the elements, placing it beneath one of the remaining trees. Over the year the etching, printed on paper that was once a tree has been reclaimed by nature and absorbed into the ground completing the cycle.

I am currently ‘Artist in Residence’ for the Manx Beauty project. This is a community initiative to restore a fishing boat the ‘Manx Beauty’ which was built in Cellardyke at the beginning of the last century. I will be working with similar concepts within the context of the Manx Beauty.